The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
In a data center environment, often a remote access appliance is used to access and communicate with one or more servers located within the data center environment. In some instances the remote access appliance may form an appliance that allows keyboard and mouse commands from a remote computer to be transmitted to the server, and video signals to be transmitted from the server back to the remotely located computer. Typically a rack interface pod is used to interface the remote access appliance to the server. The rack interface pod is coupled between an Ethernet output of the remote access appliance and the serial and video ports of the server. Typically one rack interface pod is used per server. The rack interface pod operates to digitize analog video signals being output from the video port of the server and to place the digitized video signals into Ethernet protocol format. The digitized signals, in Ethernet protocol format, are then transmitted back to the remote access appliance and then forwarded on to the remote computer that is communicating with the server.
Many present day servers also include an Ethernet port that allows a remote device to access and receive information generated by a service processor within the server. The service processor is a separate processor, typically mounted on a motherboard, that may provide highly useful information concerning a wide variety of performance metrics of the server. Such performance metrics may involve information from various types of sensors built into the server that relate to various parameters such as temperature, cooling fan speeds and power status, as well as other valuable metrics. However, until the present time, interfacing to the Ethernet port associated with the service processor has been accomplished only by the use of a separate cable (often a Cat5 cable), and a separate connection to the remote access appliance. That is, the Ethernet traffic associated with the service processor metrics has not been able to be handled by (i.e., routed through) the rack interface pod. Of course, this necessitates considerable extra cabling and the use of an extra port on the remote access appliance. When one considers that large scale data centers may involve hundreds or even thousands of servers, one can easily gain an appreciation of the significant added expense that the requirement of a separate cable and data port to handle service processor Ethernet traffic can result in. The additional cabling can also contribute to producing a somewhat “cluttered” environment around each of the servers.